


Apparitions of Your Soul

by Mohini



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captivity, Medical Devices, Sedative Use, Vomiting, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 22:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16819771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: There are memories that can never be undone.





	Apparitions of Your Soul

_Wipe him._

The words echo, flitting in and out of the periphery of awareness. It’s night. Or early morning. Both? Possibly just underground, though it would be a rarity for the voltage to have been high enough to throw off his internal timepiece.

There is one thing that’s more than certain, though. They dosed him too heavily with whatever witches’ brew of sedatives Pierce’s pseudo doctors came up with this time. Dizziness passes over him in waves, making the room spin and rock in a queasy small vessel on rough seas sort of way. His vision’s mostly back, though the colors are off. Everything’s too bright. Too sharp. Best to close his eyes and keep them that way. The sound of his breathing makes starbursts of color in the darkness behind his eyelids. It will pass. It always does.

He can feel the itch of the silicone tubing down the back of his throat. It’s supposed to provide nutrients when he’s in this not functional, but not in stasis limbo. What it really does is ratchet up the nausea every time he remembers it’s there. Each swallow causes it to rub and irritate the already swollen tissues. Controllable, if he tries. But disorienting and harder to ignore when he’s fucked up on sedative hypnotics. The vague synesthesia is evidence enough that Ambien was somewhere in the mix. Seeing sound is much more enjoyable in theory than it is in actual practice.

It’s quiet, at least, and that’s a blessing he’s willing to take. Hydra’s favorite pet, or at least their favorite semi-sentient weapon, is used to coming around from wipes to a barrage of white coated personnel, shoving tubes in, pulling them out, testing the mechanics of the arm, all while pumping him full of enough paralytics to prevent him from lashing out. He sent enough of them to their final rewards in the early years that no one comes too close without the restraints in place, both chemical and physical.

A face wavers at the edges of his memory. A name at its lips, one that he feels he should know, but doesn’t. He struggles to call forth the face more accurately. But that face, it’s linked to a trigger buried deep, so deep that it’s visceral in its function. The asset suspects that this trigger might not be one placed by his handlers. His throat tightens, diaphragm spasming upward in a harsh motion before he can think it through. He rolls off the cot, catching himself on hands and knees to retch over the concrete floor.

Basement after all, he considers, as he draws in a breath that hitches and brings with it a mouthful of the bile intent on escaping. He can feel the tube edging upwards in his esophagus with each dry retch, and he hooks a finger under it by his nostril, yanking it free and pulling it up and out in a smooth motion. No one comes to discipline him for it, and he clocks that he must be under minimal supervision, wherever it is he’s been placed this time.

Pulling the tube has one of two possible outcomes. Removing the irritant will either stop the gagging, or ratchet it up to full strength. His back arches sharply in option two, a sudden torrent of cloudy liquid exploding from his lips. There’s not time to steal a breath before the second onslaught, thicker, the nutrition supplement tasting vaguely of rancid artificial vanilla as it streams from his body.

His head aches, and his body curls up once more, frothy bile this time, and there’s nothing left to lose after that, though it takes his stomach a while to catch onto that realization. He rolls to his side, weak, dazed, the drugs still echoing in his veins and that memory face prodding at the edges. Persistent. Painful.

He drags himself back onto the cot, metal fingers leaving indentations on the frame when he grasps it for support. His eyes close, and he forces his breathing to soften, a memory of coaching someone else through the process of holding it in and easing it out guiding his familiar to his very bones calming ritual.

On the monitors, the techs watch as the Asset resumes the deep sleep of a heavily drugged, recently electrocuted superhuman. In that sleep, a voice he knows only in dreams tells him he’s coming for him. It’s a lie. Has been a lie for a very, very long time. It’s a lie that the Asset believes in the way children trust in fairy stories. It might not be true, but it’s familiar enough to be comfort all the same.


End file.
